Otto Wolff

Otto Wolff
Born	1921 Glatz, Silesia
Died	2003 Arlesheim, Switzerland

Otto Wolff (* 3.4.1921 Glatz, Silesia; † 4.9.2003 Arlesheim, Switzerland) was an anthroposophical physician and author. After Friedrich Husemann, he was the editor and main author of the three-volume standard work of anthroposophic medicine "The Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine: An Outline of a Spiritual Scientifically Oriented Medicine". In the words of his wife, Gudrune Wolff-Hoffmann, his "... Life motive was ... to cognitively permeate natural science and especially medicine with spiritual science."

Biography and work

Otto Wolff was born into a merchant family as the 5th and youngest child. During his school years he developed an intense interest in chemistry and read up on the subject autodidactically. After graduating from high school in March 1939 and serving 1/2 year in the labor service, he began studying medicine in Berlin and Königsberg, taking the medical preliminary examination (Physikum) in December 1940 after 3 1/2 trimesters. He felt at home in the university milieu, especially in an interdisciplinary circle of professors around Konrad Lorenz, in which he was the only student to participate. In April 1941 he was drafted for military service in the medical corps and came to Russia, where his own illnesses put him in life-threatening situations. Detached to study, he spent the end of the war in Breslau, Vienna, Innsbruck, where he graduated. He was quickly released from French captivity and returned to Germany. In Munich he found a biochemical activity. There he became acquainted with Rudolf Steiner's works through Johannes Rohen. A little later he met Friedrich Husemann, who invited him to join him as an assistant at the Wiesneck Clinic near Freiburg (now the Friedrich Husemann Clinic). He worked there for 7 years and became co-author of the standard work "Husemann/Wolff".

Furthermore, he worked as a general practitioner and school doctor (among others in Nuremberg). Through the mediation of Wilhelm Pelikan, he joined Weleda in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1963 for about 10 years and was also active for many years in remedy research and development, and increasingly as a lecturer. In 1981 he was the first editor of the Journal of Anthroposophic medicine. The last years of his life were marked by extensive teaching in most countries of Europe, North, Central and South America, and Africa. He was a long-time medical mentor in the Working Group of Anthroposophic Dentists.

In 1998 his life's work was published: "Grundlagen einer geisteswissenschaftlich erweiterten Biochemie", dedicated to Eugen Kolisko, as whose student he felt himself to be.

   "Today's research methodology seeks to explain a phenomenon unknown to it by reducing it to known facts. In particular, it is considered unspoken and unconsciously as "explanation", if the phenomenon can be traced back to physical or chemical terms, i.e. if the so-called "mechanism of action" is presented in the sense of a physical process or a chemical reaction. Most attempts to trace life are also made in such a way that chemical or electrical processes (potentials, electron clouds) are taken as a basis. One thinks also, e.g. the problem of the heredity is explained by the fact that one has shown the DNA structure and the code. This is just as if one would explain the language by reducing it to the known 24 letters and states that all books consist only of 24 letters. This is a fact, however, this says nothing at all about the contents of the book, but only about the means, by which this comes to the appearance. The knowledge of the letter arrangement is even sufficient to duplicate the text exactly - without the slightest understanding of the content [...].

   The phenomenon is thus pushed into a one-sidedness, which as such need not (necessarily) be wrong, but does not do justice to reality.

   This reductionism is methodically opposed to the reading in the book of nature, as it was elaborated by Goethe, the founder of a spiritual knowledge of nature. Following the above example, this means that it cannot be respectively only the sense of a research and explanation to follow the letter sequences of a word, sentence or book, but to grasp these as means of expression of a superior idea content, a thought or a being. In the future, it is a matter of reading in the book of nature and understanding it, not analyzing it!"

- Otto Wolff: Fundamentals of a Biochemistry Extended by the Humanities, p. 11f

In the same year he fell ill with an ailment that led to his death 5 years later.

Selected works

• Wolff, Otto (2000). Home remedies: herbal and homeopathic treatments for use at home (in Translated from the German). Edinburgh: Floris. ISBN 978-0-86315-319-8.CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
• Wolff, Otto; Wolff, Otto (2008). What are we really eating? practical aspects of nutrition from the perspective of spiritual science. ISBN 978-0-929979-88-5.
• Wolff, Otto (1977). Anthroposophically Orientated Medicine and Its Remedies. Weleda publications. 11. Johannesburg, South Africa: Weleda. OCLC 1028031761.
• The Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine (Das Bild des Menschen als Grundlage der Heilkunst), 3 volumes:
  • Husemann, Friedrich; Wolff, Otto (1982). The Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine: An Outline of a Spiritual Scientifically Oriented Medicine. 1. Anthroposophic Press. ISBN 978-0-88010-031-1.
    • From german: Zur Anatomie und Physiologie. Das Bild des Menschen als Grundlage der Heilkunst (in Deutsch). 1 (11. Aufl., 2. durchges. Aufl. d. überarb. und erw. 10. Aufl ed.). Stuttgart: Verl. Freies Geistesleben. 2003. ISBN 978-3-7725-0529-4.
  • Husemann, Friedrich; Wolff, Otto (2014). The Anthroposophic Approach to Medicine. 2. Mercury Press. ISBN 978-1-935136-12-5.
    • From german: Zur allgemeinen Pathologie und Therapie / mit Beiträgen von Margarethe Hauschka-Stavenhagen. Das Bild des Menschen als Grundlage der Heilkunst (in Deutsch). 2. Margarethe Hauschka (ed.) (6., bearb. u. erw. Aufl ed.). Stuttgart: Verl. Freies Geistesleben. 2000. ISBN 978-3-7725-0530-0.CS1 maint: others (link)
  • Husemann, Friedrich; Wolff, Otto (February 1989). The Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine. 3. Anthroposophic Press. ISBN 978-0-88010-273-5.
    • From german: Zur speziellen Pathologie und Therapie / mit Beitr. von Guus van der Bie. Das Bild des Menschen als Grundlage der Heilkunst (in Deutsch). 3. Guus van der Bie (ed.) (Überarb. u. erw. 4. Aufl ed.). Stuttgart: Verl. Freies Geistesleben. 1993. ISBN 978-3-7725-0531-7.CS1 maint: others (link)
• Wolff, Otto (1990). The etheric body. Spring Valley: Mercury Press. OCLC 840564106.
• Wolff, Otto (1986). Listening to and talking with children and their parents: some lessons learnt by a paediatrician. Exeter: University of Exeter. ISBN 978-0-85989-253-7.
• Wolff, Otto (2013). Grundlagen einer geisteswissenschaftlich erweiterten Biochemie (2 ed.). Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben. ISBN 978-3-7725-1091-5.